A tool that detects when emerging animal-related technologies are approaching irreversible lock-in — using early-warning signals inspired by historical patterns.
Tracked across emerging technologies
Risk assessment range
Animals potentially affected
LEWS (Lock-in Early Warning System) is a sophisticated tool designed to predict when emerging animal farming technologies are approaching irreversible lock-in. The system uses seven key variables to assess risk and help prioritize interventions to prevent permanent suffering for billions or trillions of animals.
Early choices in animal farming systems create permanent suffering trajectories. If we get insect farms wrong now, we lock in suffering for trillions of individuals. LEWS helps identify these critical intervention windows before lock-in occurs.
Lock-in occurs when technology, infrastructure, regulation, and norms converge so a system becomes self-reinforcing and extremely hard to reverse. Historical example: battery cages locked in permanently between 1950–1970.
LEWS addresses all three key EA frameworks: Neglectedness (shrimp & insects have ~zero org coverage), Scale (trillions of animals), and Tractability (early-stage interventions are cheap and high leverage).
Population scale, sentience probability, suffering intensity, industry momentum, advocacy gap, lock-in signals, and uncertainty - all normalized to provide a comprehensive risk score.
Compare current technologies to historical patterns like factory farming to predict likely outcomes and intervention windows.
Explicit uncertainty ranges that reflect confidence levels in the data, following the precautionary principle for high-stakes decisions.
Clear lock-in risk scores, stage classification, intervention urgency recommendations, and key metrics for decision-makers.